A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

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Friday, March 06, 2015

Start the day with juice

Life is a serious business, but that doesn't mean there isn't a little room at the margins to have a little fun.

This photo is Exhibit A. I was attending a presentation at a London hotel by Jean-Pierre Blais, the chair of the CRTC, Canada's broadcast regulator. I'd been writing and speaking about the man for years, so it was quite the thing for me to finally be able to meet him. I'm geeky like that.

Now, to most people, telecom regulation is as exciting as watching paint dry. And for the most part, I can't disagree with them. But there's something about this space that pulls me in and can't let go. For this supposedly most sober, bureaucratic and often impossibly complex topic of all is also a crucial factor in how ‎we connect with each other and how we lead our lives.

And making the Byzantine world of telecom regulation easy for everyone to understand is kinda my thing. So here I was super-early, ready to listen to M. Blais's first of a planned series of significant policy announcements, surrounded by some of the heaviest hitters in regional broadcast media. Reporters from national newsrooms had made the trip in to observe the spectacle, and the stage was set for a major kind of day.

So I thought a juice glass picture would be just the ticket for putting it all in perspective. Because as groundbreaking as the day turned out to be - I was, ah, rather riled up by the eventual message, and ended up somewhat forcefully disagreeing with M. Blais on his vision for local broadcasting - I didn't want to forget the simple pleasures of being in an amazing place surrounded by brilliant people whose decisions could potentially affect us all.

Before I spun my brain up and joined the media fray, I wanted to enjoy the moment with a few captured pixels. Not a bad way to keep my head on straight.

Your turn: Do you look for small ways to ground yourself during otherwise stressful times? How so?